Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid - welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned so many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this, and happy 4th July in advance.)

  • BioMan@awful.systemsEnglish
    9·
    3 days ago

    From the inimitable writers of AI2027, we now have…

    AI2040!

    https://ai-2040.com/

    Typical nonsense. Among other things they are talking 6fold increase in GDP by 2032 in their scenario, MOSTLY driven by neural networks generating text (and one extra currrent GDP driven by robots) and median personal income being 1 million dollars (inflation adjusted) by 2035.

    I am particularly amused that they have all the politicking happening in the next presidential administration rather than this year so they can pretend that all their governmental fantasies will happen because someone sane will naturally come to the conclusions they would.

    • BioMan@awful.systemsEnglish
      11·
      2 days ago

      Oh man, the “Post ASI” epilogue is a trip. Here’s what happens in 2040:

      Space beyond the solar system is divided into parcels, increasing in size cubically with distance from Earth. Everyone is given their one-ten-billionth share as a portfolio of lottery tickets, each representing the right to one-ten-billionth chance of getting each parcel. So every human gets a ticket representing a one-ten-billionth chance of owning each star in the Milky Way and each distant galaxy.

      Before the lottery is drawn, most people who are interested in control over distant space choose to trade their tickets for space properties that suit their interests.

      Many people aren’t interested in the space lottery, so when they receive the tickets, they sell their tickets for money on the open market to people who value control over space. Somewhat uncomfortably, this leads to the wealthy having disproportionate control over cosmic resources. But it is hard to avoid: if people are allowed to trade their control over the stars for Earth assets, then people wealthy in Earth assets inevitably end up disproportionately influential, and proposals for extreme redistribution of Earth assets have already been rejected as politically infeasible.

      You can, if you want, go to your space property and live there. If your property is outside the solar system, you will need to either go into cryosleep or upload yourself to a computer to survive the journey. If you hate the idea of cryosleep or uploading, or you want to visit Earth regularly, you should get property in the Solar System. If those don’t bother you, but you’re worried about nearby aliens, get property in the Milky Way or a nearby galaxy. Otherwise, why not claim a distant galaxy for maximal space?

      Good god, these people have no idea what the universe is or what they even are, do they?

      Also, holy capitalist realism Batman

      • Architeuthis@awful.systemsEnglish
        6·
        1 day ago

        If your property is outside the solar system, you will need to either go into cryosleep or upload yourself to a computer to survive the journey.

        Reminder that rationalists have developed a completely mysticalised conception of brain uploading that’s very functionally similar with old timey souls, mostly so they don’t need to deal with the SOMA problem of every instance of uploaded consciousness being a completely separate self-actualised entity.

        Like how exactly is a digital impression of my personality being shipped to alpha centauri to inspect my holdings affect my personal experience? How is it supposed to be interchangeable with using some other made up technology that takes me there in person?

        See, it works like this, no one knows what consciousness is, but it’s probably a mathematical object, and if your current conscious self is the same as the conscious self that will be inhabiting your body next friday, and also if a supreme being wants to torture you after you are dead…

      • scruiser@awful.systemsEnglish
        8·
        2 days ago

        Also, holy capitalist realism Batman

        In between this, their cap-and-trade plan for AI regulation (which is a very market-centered attempt at regulation), their insistent terminology of “citizens dividend” (because even UBI is apparently too left wing for them, much less scary communist words like collective ownership), and some other word choices… it is like they are so capitalists brain rotted that even imagining non-capitalist systems is harder for them than believing in the coming AGI God.

      • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systemsEnglish
        7·
        2 days ago

        I lost all my space lottery chances and ended up buying a cheap galaxy off of e-bay but when I finally woke up after a billion years of cryo-sleep it turns out that that the AI probe sent to my section of space made a space-treaty with the local aliens so now I have to turn around and fly home but by the time I get back to earth the sun will be halfway on it’s way to exploding which is kind of a bummer.

        • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systemsEnglish
          7·
          2 days ago

          You can, if you want, design a utopian society to your specifications. Once the Von Neumann probes reach your property, they’ll build it for you. You can set the initial conditions and let them grow, reflect, and flourish on their own

          Good news once I got back to earth e-bay still exists and my Nintendo stocks had appreciated enough to buy another distant galaxy! However three billion years of cyro-sleep has warped my personality so now I will rule my galaxy with an iron fist as a space queen. Space law only says:

          1. No torture or slavery
          2. Space property rights

          So I shall not rule through torture or slavery, but through fear and only giving my enemies property rights to individual cells on my prison planet!

          That said, note that with superintelligent assistance, other people will probably be able to eventually figure out what you did, and judge you for it.

          “Oh no I feel so judged” I say as I use my property rights to tell those other losers not to send radio-waves or subspace comms into my galaxy.

          (Wait this is supposed to be the good ending?)

    • Architeuthis@awful.systemsEnglish
      6·
      2 days ago

      There’s a corresponding siskind post also called something something plan A, I skimmed until the part where the US and China take de facto control of chip infrasrtucture and distribution (saying “nationalise” is haram for free market types), basically imagine having to write a letter to the government to formally justify upgrading your computer, and that’s all the AI fanfiction I can tolerate without ruining my breakfast.

      Also clanker crankers appropriating the term ‘Golden Path’ from Dune is just distasteful.

    • scruiser@awful.systemsEnglish
      7·
      3 days ago

      My favorite part was the section where they worked out the logistics of China hiding a data center inside of a mountain.

      • Architeuthis@awful.systemsEnglish
        10·
        2 days ago

        I like how Yud’s rogue data center air raid task force is gradually becoming another weird rationalist accepted truth.

        • scruiser@awful.systemsEnglish
          6·
          2 days ago

          Yeah, they’ve internalized their own fiction and fantasies so heavily they forget when they are talking about something they made up and not something real. And in turn, they forget to explain their terms for normies and ridicule commenters that can’t keep up with their lore.

          Like in the comments and discussion for AI: 2040 on lesswrong, in response to a heavily downvoted comment, they treated “neuralese” like an obviously real thing just around the corner that will solve chain of thought. Or assuming continual learning is obviously just one or two inventions away and not a fundamentally missing feature of LLMs that no one has a good solution to.

      • scruiser@awful.systemsEnglish
        5·
        2 days ago

        The benefit of putting your predictions 15-30 years in the future is that people forget them by the time the deadline comes around and you can pivot more easily and also claim credit for the few successful predictions while all your failures are forgotten. The AI: 2027 could learn from Kurzweils’ example, except apparently you can just keep claiming credit for being right even when your wrong prediction is only a few years old!

      • Charlie Stross@wandering.shop
        9·
        2 days ago

        @Soyweiser Last timer I looked (probably around 2001) I seem to recall Kurzweil was saying AGI and brain uploading by 2025. He’s basically selling Christian evangelical premillennialism, minus the Baby Jeezus.

        • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
          5·
          2 days ago

          Looked on wikipedia, and there they said 2045, so he prob is just saying whatever, nobody (important) will judge him for all the bad predictions after all.

          Just like the 2027/2040 people

    • lurker@awful.systemsEnglish
      7·
      3 days ago

      Oh damn, they originally said it was gonna be called AI 2030, so they pushed it back a bit

      It’s not a rehash of AI 2027 with moved-back timelines like I thought it would be, instead its what they believe should happen in regards to AI development

      Plan A is our positive vision for what should happen instead. In this scenario, humanity delays the development of superintelligence until 2040, makes all AI research public, allows dozens of companies globally to catch up to the frontier, and intentionally enters a regime of mutually assured compute destruction.

      And in the first footnote:

      So far reality is tracking closer to AI 2027 than even we expected. (2027 was our modal year at time of publication, not our median.)

      According to them, preliminary analysis of the data as of July 2026 says that rate of progress is 75% of AI 2027. This says Daniel K only believes in a 25% chance of AGI by the end of 2027, their model also hasn’t changed so their medians are still shown as beyond 2027. Footnote 11 also flat-out says they have no idea how much things will keep progressing

      I’m not gonna be able to go through the whole thing because busy today, but those are my observations based off a quick glance

      • scruiser@awful.systemsEnglish
        7·
        3 days ago

        So far reality is tracking closer to AI 2027 than even we expected. (2027 was our modal year at time of publication, not our median.)

        They aren’t even trying to hide the fact that their predictions have already failed but instead claiming victory.

        • lurker@awful.systemsEnglish
          5·
          3 days ago

          Should’ve left in the full footnote:

          ”The AI 2027 scenario is still roughly what we expect the future to look like: a mad scramble to superintelligence leading to either AI takeover or extreme concentration of power. So far reality is tracking closer to AI 2027 than even we expected. (2027 was our modal year at time of publication, not our median.) You can read more about our views on timelines here and here.”

          So yeah you’re bang on the money. Funny how they went on a press tour hyping up Kokotajlo as a forecaster and claiming that dismissing AI 2027 as hype was a “grave mistake” to “yeah we did not expect for it to follow our predictions” and still being slower than what they predicted

      • lurker@awful.systemsEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        Piggybacking off myself to say that the way they wrote the update on their 2025 review is weird. I’m assuming that they mean 2025 was 65% pace but 2026 crept up to 75%, but the way they wrote it makes me think that they actually meant to say “we originally thought 2025 was 65%, but new data shows it was actually 75%” which would be odd, I’m still assuming the former since it makes more sense to me (they also drop it with zero elaboration like, what metric increased with this new data since this was an overall % of pace? not to mention the real percentage was 58-66% based off their means and medians so it would actually look like 58-76% pace)

        I mean no matter which way you spin it we’re still going slower than AI 2027, so hooray

        (turned this into a second comment so they first one wouldn’t be a wall of text)